Evaluation of the compliance of public hospitals of ilam province with the criteria of elderly friendly hospitals

Background: The elderly population is increasing and one of the problems of this group is the increase in their care needs. This research was conducted with the aim of evaluating the compliance of public hospitals of Ilam province with the criteria of elderly friendly hospitals.Material & Method: This was a comparative quantitative-cross-sectional study with statistical population including 122 managers, supervisors and head nurses from eight hospitals in Ilam province using head count method during the calendar year 2021. The data collection tool was the elderly-friendly hospital list. Due to small sample size single-group comparative test was used, and one-way ANOVA and POST-HOC tests were used to compare the examined hospitals with each other.Results: The study population was all managers, supervisors of medical, surgical and emergency wards of eight hospitals in Ilam province, accounting total 122 people. Based on the findings and comparison of these public hospitals with the senior-friendly index, it was determined that the average indices were 0.725, 0.866, 0.966, 0.744, 0.945, 0.940, 0.734 and 0.918 for Mostafa, Abdanan, Mehran, Sarableh, Ivan, Darre Shahr, Emam and Dehloran hospitals, respectively. Mostafa Hospital has the lowest average with 0.725 and Mehran has the highest with 0.966. The negative values obtained for the T statistic also prove that these hospitals are at a lower level than the senior-friendly hospital index, however, the T values were significant only for Mostafa, Emam and Sarableh hospitals (P<0.01) and other hospitals, despite being lower than the desired average level, are not significantly different from it (P>0.01).Conclusion: The conditions related to the environment and equipment of the hospital are acceptable based on the indicators of the elderly-friendly hospital, but in the case of human resources and hospital staff, more attention needs to be paid to the field of training and employment of suitable people familiar with the methods. It was caring for the elderly.